


Should Have Known Better

by burning_arrow



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-28 13:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8448190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burning_arrow/pseuds/burning_arrow
Summary: It was all Danny could do to get Kirsch to safety.  She knew she couldn't be trusted past that.  She just needed to put as many miles between her and Silas as she could before Mother tried to open the last seal.  She'd done what she could - right?Just a little of what happened to Danny after she left the library...





	

**Author's Note:**

> I love this series and would love, love, love to write some Hollstein, but this is what my brain demanded. It felt like Danny's story was so incomplete. It was written in a single short sitting and I have no beta.

Danny shoved her hands deeper into her pockets and slouched a little further down as she made her way across the campus of Silas University. Anything to remain unnoticed. The general chaos of the Dean – Mother – preparing to open the seventh seal and the unceasing night brought about by the breaking of the sixth helped a great deal, but still she felt exposed, vulnerable. The hairs on her neck and arms stood stiff and her skin crawled as if unseen eyes watched her. She had Mother to thank for that. Danny had made her choice, protected Kirsch - poor, sweet, hopeless Kirsch who just wouldn't give up on her - the only way she knew how by leaving him with Laura and Vampirella in that twisted little library. She’d been half shocked that she’d even been able to get back into the reality-bending building, given the library’s overprotective nature, but maybe it somehow sensed her intent. She’d take any help she could get right now. She was taking herself off the board, no longer one of Mother’s pawns. Yet even now, she could hear Mother’s call reaching out to her, like a sickly sweet song wafting on the breeze, barely audible but persistent nonetheless.

She sighed, running a hand through her hair in frustration. Freeing oneself from Mother’s grasp was no easy task, what with her magic almost literally coursing through Danny’s veins. Pulling away was like trying to drag herself out of quicksand, each step threatening to suck her down instead. The thing that gave her new life was the very thing she was trying to run from. Somewhere along the line Danny had developed a tiny mote of begrudging respect for Carmilla’s open defiance of Mother. Of course there was also a larger dose of smug satisfaction that it hadn’t taken her 300 years to break away. In death, life, whatever the hell this existence was, she’d finally proven herself stronger than that brooding, self-centered, weak waste of immortality. Not that it mattered.

Taking a quick left to avoid a squad of Corvae goons, Danny muttered curses under her breath. She told herself not to go there. Thoughts like those were what led to Danny trying to burn down her former life and everyone in it. They led her to using a few Summers – and even the occasional Zeta when Mother would allow it – as her personal blood bags, warm and sweet until they were drained dry, each and every one discarded into the long dark, every single one except Kirsch of course. They led her to setting fire to Laura’s old dorm room with unblinking eyes. They led her to rejoicing in JP’s screams as they slowly separated his consciousness from his host body, sacrificing him to the sixth seal. She shuddered, half in pleasure and half in disgust at the memories.

There was a person she was supposed to be.

But that person was gone. Mother’s song had been too strong to resist. It had given Danny purpose, no matter how twisted, when everything she’d fought for blew away like ash on the wind. Now she was throwing that away too and it left her unmoored in the most disturbing way. All she knew was she needed to get the hell off campus and as far from Silas as she could in one night. Either the world died or it didn’t, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

Another group of Corvae guards suddenly appeared before her. She was about to bolt into the darkness, but the gaggle of students a.k.a. slaves flanked on all sides by the corporate mercenaries snagged her attention. She hesitated. They weren’t headed toward the hell pit or the barracks.

“Hey,” she grunted at one of the armed men as the group passed her by, “Where are you taking the diggers?”

The man started back, clearly not even noticing the towering vampire until she spoke. Danny smirked. There were a few advantages to being the unholy undead. As a human, her stature had drawn attention, mostly unwanted, to her throughout her entire life. Now she could blend into the shadows even in plain sight. The man gave a small half-salute as he recognized one of the Dean’s inner circle.

“Seems that their usefulness is limited now that the final seal has been excavated. We’ve been ordered to sanitize the lot,” he explained, eying the bedraggled bunch as they hauled their weary bodies by step by step. He reached out and shoved a small dark-haired kid, barely old enough to be a frosh, back into line when his shuffling steps lagged behind the others.

Danny growled and the guard’s attention snapped back to her. There was a hint of fear in his eyes that he tried to hide behind blank features. “I assume that the Dean’s orders still stand?”

Danny swallowed back the words that burned in her throat. This wasn’t her fight. Not anymore. She just needed to leave, to forget all about this place and these people. She shook her head and sneered. “Of course her orders still stand.”

She turned sharply on her heel, dismissing the guard without another word. She stormed away, her mood a foul black thing rising up from the depths. Each of her booted footfalls sounded loudly in the deep eternal night. She was not going to turn around. An image of Kirsch’s face, open and trusting, flashed in her mind. No, she’d saved him. She didn’t owe a thing to anyone else in this godforsaken place.

Without meaning to, Danny tracked the sound of the group’s slow progress through the dark, the steady march of the Corvae guards, the tired dragging steps of the students, the uneven gait of the injured among them. Laura calling her a hero echoed inside her. Saying she hadn’t forgotten. Danny balled her hands into fists and kept her eyes straight ahead. She was NOT going back.

Then the screaming started. Danny’s steps slowed, then stopped altogether. Though she was halfway across campus from the group now, her vampiric senses covered the distance with ease. The Corvae goons didn’t even have the decency to execute the students in a merciful fashion. They were feeding them to the harpies. And they were laughing about it.

Oh, goddamn it.

Without thought Danny sprinted across campus, covering the distance in the blink of an eye, her fangs extended and her eyes burning with rage. As she tore through mercenaries and harpies alike, Kevlar and feathers and blood spraying around her, she knew she wasn’t leaving. She might not be fit for the main fight, the bloodlust and anger still too strong, but there was too much left undone for her to just quit. Let Laura and her vampire have their final showdown with destiny, to live or die, it didn’t matter. And Danny laughed wildly at the thought as she tossed a guard high in the air, clipping a harpy in the wing and bringing the creature to the ground. Because it really didn’t matter anymore. They may have their star-crossed love that eclipsed everything but each other, but this was HER campus, these were HER people, and she’d be damned (again) if she let them be ground to pulp between the careless clashing of good and evil. She’d thought she’d fought and died for nothing, but there were still people that needed her.

She whirled about as more guards rushed onto the quad, and the talons of a harpy scraped down her shoulder. Snarling, she snatched the beast from the air by its leg, first breaking its wing and then its neck. She stepped in front of a few students as the guards raised their guns. Most of the students had scattered the moment she’d barreled onto the scene, but a few lingered in shock. She tossed them a quick glance over her shoulder.

“Run!” she barked, and they did. One young woman hesitated, and as her eyes met Danny’s something akin to awe and gratitude flashed across the girl’s features. Then she was gone. Danny felt something shift and quicken in her chest, something that she’d thought was dead and buried.

Danny turned back to the guards, drawing herself to her full height. Maybe she wasn’t who she was supposed to be, but she finally knew who she was. She was Danny Lawrence, and for once that was enough. She grinned.

It was going to be one hell of a night.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) This was largely written to Celtic Woman's rendition of "I See Fire". Check it out. It's a rather enjoyable version.
> 
> 2) Let me know what you think, especially about my characterization. My biggest fear with fanfic is losing a character's voice.


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